Operant Conditioning Vs Classical Conditioning Essay

506 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The basic principles of classical conditioning theory

Classical conditioning is the learning by association between two stimuli. This process was proposed by John Watson (based off Pavlov’s observations with his dogs). Watson proposed that all aspects of human psychology are patterns of a stimulus and a response. In the beginning stage of classical conditioning an unconditioned or an unlearned behavior produces an unconditioned response. For example, when I contracted food poisoning after eating at a restaurant I displayed classical conditioning. When I acquired food poisoning (unconditioned stimulus), I experienced nausea (an unconditioned response). During conditioning a neutral stimulus, that before would create no response, is associated with the unconditioned stimulus. With my example, it …show more content…

Operant conditioning is learning by association between a behavior and its consequence. BF skinner is known for being the father of operant conditioning, he introduced the idea of reinforcement. This meant behaviors that are reinforced are more likely to be repeated and behaviors that weren’t reinforced will be extinguished. For example, I have experienced operant conditioning through positive reinforcement. When I was in elementary school my teacher had a treasure box and every time a student received a perfect score on an assignment, they earned a prize from the treasure box of their choice. This explains positive reinforcement because it strengthened the behavior (getting favorable grades), by providing a rewarding consequence (an item out of the treasure box). There is also negative reinforcement, which strengthens a behavior by removing a stimulus that is unpleasant following the behavior. Another example of operant conditioning I have experienced is negative punishment. In elementary school the teacher took away my recess because I talked during testing. This shows negative punishment, because it weakens the behavior of talking during testing by taking away my recess. There is also positive punishment, which is adding a negative consequence after an unpleasant

Show More
Related

  • Wilhelm Wuundt And B. Skinner's Differences: The Birth Of Psychology

    1414 Words  | 3 Pages

    Classical Conditioning was a phenomenon that a man named Ivan Pavlov explored in the twentieth-century. His work laid the foundation for many other psychologists such as John Watson. Pavlov’s idea came when he seized on an incidental observation. He noticed putting food in a dogs mouth caused salvation. However, the dog not only salivated to the food it began to also salivate to mere sight of the food, or the food dish. He began experimenting; first he slid the food presented the food by sliding the food bowl and blowing meat powder into the dogs mouth at the same exact moment. They paired it with a neutral stimuli event the dog could see but did not associate it with food (Myers, 2014, p.256). Food in the mouth automatically, unconditionally triggers the salivary reflex. Pavlov called drooling the unconditioned response and the food the unconditioned stimulus. Salvation in response to a tone is learned, it is conditioned upon the dogs associating the tone with the food it is called conditioned response (Myers, 2014, p.256). The stimulus that used to be neutral is the conditioned stimulus. I found it interesting and relating to everyday life because my dog often does the same. We keep his food in the garage so opening the garage door would be the conditioned stimulus. As soon as the garage door opens my dog begins to salivate which is the conditioned response. Whereas,

    Read More

  • Kincaid And Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants

    1141 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior” (Cherry). Positive reinforcement which is praising a person for doing something good verses negative reinforcement which is an unpleasant remark a punishment. B.F. Skinner did an experiment on a rat, the rat was taught to push two buttons, one to receive food and the other was a light electric shock. The rat tried both buttons and realized which button was good and which one was bad. This experiment goes to show that upon the rewards and punishment system one can learn their rights from their wrongs through a series of lessons. Kincaid and Hemingway both use operant conditioning to show human behavior under stimulus control.

    Read More

  • B. F. Laurie's Psychoanalytic Theory

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    Operant conditioning is changing behavior through the use of reinforcement after the desired action is given; a behavior that is rewarded positively is more likely to continue and a behavior that is rewarded negatively would likely stop occurring (Santrock,2014). In addition to reinforcement, Skinner also talks about punishment. Reinforcement increases the probability an action or behavior will be repeated, while punishment is intended to decrease a behavior (McLeod, 2015). When Laurie was younger, she thought she was being sent to school every day to socialize with her friends and that learning was a secondary, unintentional happenstance. In third grade, compared to the other students in her class, she was falling short in reading and math.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Operant Conditioning

    719 Words  | 2 Pages

    Operant conditioning is a kind of conditioning, which examines how often a behavior will or occur depending on the effects of the behavior (King, 2016, pg. ). The words positive and negative are used to apply more significance to the words reinforcement or punishment. Positive is adding to the stimulus, while negative is removing from the stimulus (King, 2016). For instance, with positive reinforcement, there is the addition of a factor to increase the number of times that the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive reinforcement is when a child is given an allowance for completing their household chores. The positive reinforcement is the allowance which helps to increase the behavior of doing chores at home. In contrast with negative

    Read More

  • Classical Conditioning And Operant Conditioning Essay

    526 Words  | 2 Pages

    Classical conditioning and operant conditioning play a huge role with the future use of a drug. First, just like in the theory of Pavlov, classical conditioning with the role of substance and addiction can start to form much similar. For example, if an individual sits in traffic after getting off work every day and pulls out marijuana to smoke in the car, the car will then start to become the conditioned stimulus to the substance, the individual will pair sitting in traffic now as its time for the daily joint. Since the car is now the conditioned stimulus to the individual, the person will now start to experience those cravings every time they are sitting in the car. Most of the time, the individual will experience relapse, since the body is now fully conditioned to

    Read More

  • Classical Conditioning Vs Operant Conditioning Essay

    787 Words  | 2 Pages

    Learning in its most basic form is our minds associating one thing with another. Digging deeper reveals that there are trends in how human beings and animals learn by association, usually this is done by a brain connecting one event to another. The two different ways a brain tends to learn is through either classical conditioning or operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is learning to associate one stimulus with another stimulus, and Operant Conditioning is learning by associating a response or behavior with a consequence. Knowing how people and animals learn is an important piece of knowledge if one is to help benefit the greater good.

    Read More

  • Positive Exerforcement And The Philosophy Of Operant Conditioning

    988 Words  | 2 Pages

    Operant conditioning is a type of learning where a person is taught that specific actions are related to specific consequences. The main goal of using this type of conditioning is to encourage the individual to change his or her behavior in some way. Specifically, the individual can be encouraged to perform a desired behavior more often through use of positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, and he or she can also be encouraged to perform an undesired behavior less often through use of positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive reinforcement is basically a type of operant conditioning in which an addition or reward is given to the individual when he or she has displayed the desired behavior, and as a result, the behavior

    Read More

  • Pavlov's and Erikson's Theories

    1971 Words  | 4 Pages

    Ivan Pavlov developed a theory called classical conditioning which proposes that learning process occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus. Classical conditioning involves placing a neutral signal before a naturally occurring reflex like associating the food with the bell in Pavlov experiment. In classical conditioning, behavior is learnt by association where a stimulus that was originally neutral can become a trigger for substance use or cravings due to repeated associations between those stimuli and substance use (Pavlov, 1927).

    Read More

  • Classical and Operant Conditioning

    1360 Words  | 3 Pages

    Classical conditioning is a technique of learning that occurs when an unconditional stimulus is paired with a conditional stimulus. The unconditional stimulus is biologically potent, the conditional stimulus is neutral (Kalat, 2011). Example of each is taste of food and sound of tuning fork respectively. After repeated pairing, the organism exhibits a conditional response to the conditional stimulus. The conditional response is similar to the unconditioned response though it is relatively impermanent and is acquired through experience (Kalat, 2011).

    Read More

  • Classical Conditioning Theory

    1198 Words  | 3 Pages

    I. Introduction of classical conditioning Classical conditioning also called as Pavlovian conditioning or respondent conditioning. It is a kind of learning a new behavior through association that when a conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) and evokes a conditioned response (CR). It also is a learning process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus (Cherry, 2014). Classical conditioning has much strength such as can help to explain all aspects of human behavior and many of advertisers will use classical conditioning to advertise their produces, however it also have some weaknesses such as all classical conditioning responses must involve a reflex and classical conditioning is a completely physical process, learning is not important as reflected in scenario. This paper will talk about the strengths and the weaknesses of classical conditioning theory followed by a brief description of the scenario and the strengths and weaknesses of applying classical conditioning on it.

    Read More

  • Watson's Classical Conditioning Research

    982 Words  | 2 Pages

    What is Skinner’s Operant Conditioning? Skinner was the first to discuss operant conditioning. McLead (2007) explained that an operant condition means that using reinforcements given after a desired response could change behavior. There were three types of responses that can follow the behavior. Neutral operants, reinforces, and punishers were the three types of responses. According to McLead (2007), Skinner invented a box with levers and lights to test his theory. He placed a hungry rat inside where the rat learned to press the levels for different responses. One level would give it a piece of food and the rat would not receive food when the light was off. This box demonstrated the shaping of behaviors through operant conditioning.

    Read More

  • Operant Stressing: What Is Operant Conditioning?

    1072 Words  | 3 Pages

    What is operant conditioning? Operant conditioning is the type of learning that involves associating a voluntary response and a (good or bad) consequence. With operant conditioning, there are two types of schedules of reinforcement: continuous and partial. Continuous involves always reinforcing the

    Read More

  • The Nervous System and Neurotransmitters, Questions and Answers

    735 Words  | 2 Pages

    In operant conditioning, there is an association between an individual’s behavior and its consequence. A consequence can either be reinforcement or punishment (233). Positive and negative reinforcements will increase the behavior. When an individual is reinforced, they will continue to repeat the behavior to receive the reinforcement again. Punishment, on the other hand, will decrease the behavior. If an individual is punished after a particular behavior, they will behave that way less often to avoid the punishment.

    Read More

  • Operant Conditioning Experiment

    446 Words  | 1 Pages

    In this experiment, I am planning to change my behavior of biting my nails. This is widely regarded as a bad habit, and I feel as though it would be quite simple to condition this rather unsanitary behavior out of my everyday actions. If the experiment goes as planned, I will no longer be biting my nails within the next seven days. If my assumptions are correct, then operant conditioning will be the most suitable form of conditioning for this experiment; this is my conviction because I feel as though this would involve mostly ¨voluntary¨ behaviors along with negative reinforcement.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Classical Conditioning And Operant Conditioning

    1499 Words  | 3 Pages

    Classical conditioning and operant conditioning both played a key role in the history of the study of learning, but, as argued by B.F Skinner, there are key differences to be noted between the two (Gleitman, Gross, Reisberg, 2011).

    Read More

More about Operant Conditioning Vs Classical Conditioning Essay

Open Document